I am a home-school mom hoping to share the challenges, joys and disappointments in home-schooling,be an encouragement to others, seek advise and wisdom from those who have come before me and offer my insight to different curriculum by posting product reviews, etc

Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Helping Process

While reading the book " Direct Social Work Practice”, I stumbled over a good description of the stages in the helping relationship that I would like to share with you.

The six-stage model serves as a cognitive map that can help us as
change agents or facilitators of organizational change establish a good
foundation for understanding the different modes of intervening and
identifying actionable next steps forward.

Stage 1: Developing the helping relationship. This
includes establishing a genuine relationship based on trust by treating
each case and client as unique, suspend critical judgement and the
typical “soultions-in-a-box” approach. Listen, learn, respect. The
client owns both the problem and the solution, and we are here to join
them in their journey.

Stage 2: Helping clients understand the problem situation. Help
clients or management assess and clarify their situation within their
own frames of reference. Often we can help by identifying patterns,
mirror assumptions and provide a new language for “the bigger picture”.

Stage 3: Helping clients identify a preferred scenario and establish change goals.
This includes developing a range of different scenarios and choosing
what goals to pursue. How can we help develop, understand and
communicate the desired end state, benefits and unique drivers
internally and externally.

Stage 4: Helping clients plan and take action.
Support a highly adaptable and creative approach based on a structured
step-by-step plan utilising well proven methods. Help measure results
and gather feedback throughout the project to continuously adjust plans
and measures.

Stage 5: Consolidating the change. Find ways
of anchoring the changes, reminding and rewarding the new ways. Here the
benefit indicators from the goal setting can be a very useful thing to
rigorously track, as well as securing relevant sources of feedback.

Stage 6: Withdrawing from the helping relationship.
Ensuring a professional handover and documentation of the journey, the
learning, the effect and the challenges ahead. Ensuring sufficient
training and room for reflection.

For me the biggest challenge is often to “establish the helping
relationship” with new clients, projects or management teams with whom I
have no proven track record or relationship – trust just takes time,
and sometimes you just don’t have time before you either have to decide
or get going.